


A sharp shock to your soft side

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 19:23:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10703505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Once upon a time, a Targaryen on dragonback bartered flight for fealty.Now, here, a dragonless Targaryen seeks to barter a bridal cloak for a thousand swords and more, and Sansa must decide what is best for her son and his people.





	A sharp shock to your soft side

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday [Ruby!](http://sansaregina.tumblr.com)
> 
> Sorry it's slightly late! Title from _Soft Shock_ by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

There is still blood on his face when this Conqueror Reborn comes to speak with her. 

Sansa knows blood, now. Blood between her legs once a month, her father's blood on her father's sword, Petyr's blood on Harry's sword, Harry's blood spilled across the floor of the High Hall by Lyn Corbray, turned traitor because he saw advancement in the advancing Targaryen army.

Lyn Corbray's blood, surely, is now spilled across the stones of the far-away valley floor, for he paid the highest price for his betrayal. Sansa made certain of that.

"Lady Arryn," says Aegon Targaryen, the sixth of that name to wear a crown. He is as beautiful as she is herself, all shades of silver and gold and striking black amethyst eyes - are these black amethysts poisoned too? 

"Lord Targaryen," Sansa returns, still uncertain in this newest name - a Stark so long, then a Stone, and so briefly a Hardyng before Sweetrobin's wings failed him and Harry rose to the lofty Arryn name, carrying her with him. "You are welcome to the Eyrie."

Someone - Randa, scathingly - had japed that here was history come again, a stern, cold Lady Arryn standing regent to her little lord son against Targaryen incursion.

Sansa is no Sharra Arryn, and Jasper, still in swaddling clothes, is no Ronnell. It remains to be seen whether or not this Aegon is like his namesake, or even like the Queen who took the Eyrie on dragonback - Sansa has read her histories, and remembers them, and is not sure which would be worse.

The only thing she does know, the one certainty in her heart, is that if this man takes her son, she will kill him.

 

* * *

 

The Eyrie is beautiful, but it is austere.

Even in the comfort of her chambers, bundled up in furs and heavy woven blankets, she worries that Jasper will catch a chill. They are so far into the pale sky, after all, wreathed today in cloudwisps but tomorrow in a snowstorm, that she despairs of keeping him warm and well.

"You must grow strong and tall, little falcon," she tells him, watching him nurse at her breast - he has Harry's strong features, cut through with what she thinks will be her straight nose and wide eyes, all under the same thick, fair hair as his father had. Sansa did not love Harry, she does not think it was possible to love him when she could not trust him, not having seen how he behaved when she was Alayne, but she loves this child they created together, and is glad that her son is Harry's, is  _ obviously  _ Harry's.

Petyr would have had it otherwise, and had sought to fit the world to his liking, before Harry ran him through.

"You must grow strong and tall, my little love," Sansa tells Jasper, smiling when he catches her finger and blinks up at her with eyes as blue as her own. "And you must be clever, too, and sometimes dangerous, and then, mayhaps, you might be happy. There is nothing in the world I want more than your happiness, little one."

 

* * *

 

 

"I would have you remain here, as your son's regent," Aegon Targaryen says, louche and elegant in clothes of black and dark purple-red, richer than Sansa's own but more worn. "I would also remind you that any hint of treachery will be uncovered before it can become a plot, and punishment will be without mercy."

"I would remind you, my lord," Sansa says, in white and slate-blue, almost grey, "that I am a mother, and unlikely to do anything that might endanger my son."

He smiles a little at that, something aching in his eyes that surprises Sansa, and nods.

"Very well, my lady," he says, "but I hope you will not take it as an insult if I leave one of my advisers here, as a... a guide."

"As a spy," she says bluntly, shocked by her own daring. He smiles, though, without the guarded eyes Sansa has become so used to in the austerity of the Eyrie - luxury is rationed here, and not afforded to smiles. "That is acceptable, my lord, until such a time as this war is done."

"Once the war is  _ done,  _ Lady Arryn," he says, "I will return to you, and your fine little lad, and we will discuss more permanent terms. For now, you have my thanks - would that more people were open to peaceful settlement."   
  


* * *

 

 

The war goes on, as wars are wont to do, and Sansa watches it all from high above, collects rumours and stories as carefully as she does coin, and waits.

Lady Lemore, one of Aegon Targaryen's most trusted companions, watches Sansa, and waits. Sansa is very good at this, at watching and waiting, but more importantly, she is very good at  _ being watched,  _ and so this is not even slightly difficult for her. 

She moves about her days as though nothing is amiss. The Eyrie is spectacular, but it is not large, and so it is no great task to manage - oh, the accounts still bother her, but the maester sent from Oldtown to replace weak, desperate Colemon, Lorcan, is a clever man who has no trouble giving way to a woman.

Sansa’s skin crawls to think of Colemon, who so readily brewed poisons for Sweetrobin under Petyr’s orders, but she pushes aside the loathing. It would not do to be less than serene, under Lady Lemore’s watch, after all.

“You have a deft touch with your household, Lady Arryn,” she says, one night while Sansa is dozing by the fire in her solar, Jasper asleep against her chest. It is quiet, as life so rarely is, and Sansa is more annoyed than she dares express that Lady Lemore is interrupting this rare moment of freedom. “Learned at your mother’s side, no doubt.”

“Somewhat,” Sansa agrees, sitting up carefully so she does not disturb Jasper’s rest. “Learned a little from watching Cersei Lannister, too, and realising that the best thing to do is surely the opposite of whatever she does. And even a little from my aunt, whose household was happy, if only because she let them do as they pleased, so long as they pleased her first.”

Lady Lemore laughs at that, quiet and low, and comes to sit opposite Sansa, in the chair that no one has dared occupy since Harry’s death - respect for her husband, or belief that Sansa grieves him so deeply as to find insult in anyone taking even this smallest of his places, she doesn’t know, but a wide berth has been given to those spaces Harry once filled in her life, since his death.

It doesn’t worry Sansa, to see Lady Lemore in Harry’s chair, and mayhaps that ought to worry her. She has so many other, more important things to worry about now, though, that this seems… Nothing at all.

“His Grace refused his cousin’s hand in marriage,” Lady Lemore says, and Sansa has heard this already - Arianne Martell was sent home to Sunspear to lick her wounds after what had reportedly been a very public rejection, replaced at the King-to-be’s side by one of her bastard cousins, and speculation has been rife ever since. Even here, among the clouds, Sansa has heard of it. “He will not wed Princess Arianne, but he must wed someone - and your claims are substantial. Your skills are, too.”

“My duty lies in the care of my son,” Sansa says, careful, for her claims are next to nothing now - Winterfell is lost to her, still in Roose Bolton’s cold-fingered grasp, and it would take hardly any effort to remove Jasper from the Eyrie, which leaves Sansa with nothing at all.

“Your duty is to your King before even your son,” Lady Lemore says, almost gentle. “You may be given cause to remember that before you would like, my lady.”

 

* * *

The King - for he must be a King now, crowned by acclaim amid the burning wreckage of Harrenhall - ascends the Eyrie not by Snow and Stone and Sky, but as Visenya did of old, on a dragon with brilliantly white scales and deep gold ridges.

“He is not for me, I don’t think,” he says, dismounting where once Visenya first touched her boots to the Eyrie’s stone, “but we have become friends, of a sort.”

The dragon screeches in answer, and wheels into the sky - wheels away north, to what end Sansa does not know, leaving the King alone but for the sword hanging on his hip, the shield strapped to his back, and the smile on his face.

His black amethyst eyes are bright now, with joy and excitement and something else that Sansa does not recognise. He is more beautiful than Sansa now, because he is happy, and she has not been happy in so, so long.

“The Eyrie is yours, Your Grace,” she says, dropping to bended knee - not into a curtsy, delicate and unsteady, but to one knee, strong and firm, like a man. Jasper, bound to her chest in a heavy sling, gurgles happily, and she cannot help but smile. “You are most welcome.”

The King, shocking her, bows at the waist, and then offers her his hands, to help her stand.

“I am glad to be here, Lady Arryn,” he says, eyes still shining but face serious. “Come, my lady - we have much to discuss.”

 

* * *

Varys the Spider has brokered a peace between Aegon Targaryen and his aunt, the Dragon Queen, who is sailing even now from Essos.

The dragon the King rode to the Eyrie, the dragon who still seems too large and surreal to exist beyond Sansa’s dreams, belongs to this Queen, as did the dragon felled over Harrenhall. A green dragon, the rumours say, ridden by the late King of the Isles, a monster beyond even those depths attained by Theon, when he slew Bran and Rickon.

“Would that we had more time for sentiment, my lady,” he says, sitting in what was Sansa’s chair, when this chair was Harry’s. “But we are at war, and time is a luxury not mine.”

“Your Grace?”

She knows what is coming, of course she does, and she would have known even without Lady Lemore’s warnings. Sansa is many things, but a fool is not one of them.

“The dragon I rode here,” he says, “is gone - and another of my aunt’s dragons is gone as well, dead at Harrenhall. She has one yet, and on that dragon she will lead the final assault on King’s Landing.”

“Her vanguard will be her own, and the Golden Company,” Sansa guesses. “But you will lead her rearguard, which will be largely formed by Valemen.”

“With your consent, Lady Arryn,” he says, “yes, that is precisely what I will do.”

“And you feel it best to give them a reason to be loyal to you, beyond the crown you seek to wear,” she says, wondering how he and his dragon-taming aunt will juggle crown and throne between them. “How better, than to become stepfather to their little lord?”

Jasper is asleep in the nursery now, Sansa knows, and will wake in an hour or so for a feed - a feed that will be provided by a wetnurse, for if she is to wed Aegon Targaryen then she must be able to conceive again as quickly as possible, and everyone knows a nursing woman cannot get with child.

 

* * *

She binds her breasts, to dry up her milk, and sews a bridal cloak - black satin, red silk thread, edged in the tiniest fringe of scarlet lace.

She sits, for a long while, with her last bridal cloak in her lap, and then sits a longer while with her maiden cloak in her hands. Which is right to wear? Is she marrying Aegon Targaryen as Sansa Arryn, or as Sansa Stark? Or as both?

She has no idea. For the first time in a long while, she feels utterly lost, and longs for her mother’s guidance as she has not in years.

“Oh, little falcon,” she sighs, rocking Jasper against her breast and watching his eyes drift and droop to a sleepy close, wondering how she is to abandon their bloody-edged peace. “What are we to do?”

 

* * *

Aegon Targaryen holds Sansa’s son,  _ Harry’s  _ son, for the first time on the day of their wedding.

Sansa did not love Harry, does not mourn him as her mother surely mourned her father, because she never really trusted him.

She wonders if letting Aegon cradle Jasper’s beloved, adored head in his slim fingers is trust. She wonders if letting him garb her in black satin and red silk is trust.

She wonders, and hopes, for it has been a long and lonely few years without anyone to trust. 

 


End file.
